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"This will sting a bit," the nurse says. The two student nurses stare at me. The blond one smiles warmly, the black haired one frowns at me. I feel like a baby. I look over at my mom in her chair by my side, with her short brown hair, the remnants of chemo, her face full of stress and wrinkles, things a hard life gives a person. I think of her feet, hard things that walked on tacks and broken glass and bled, but she never noticed until everything was taken care of or until a sick child was fed. I think of her cooking food and repeatedly getting burnt with the hot water, just saying “Ow,” while smiling. I feel the needle go into my arm, it isn’t that bad. I relax, and then there is a prick.
            "Ow," my arm reacts against my will.
            "You need to stay still," she says. I didn’t mean to jump, I feel stupid. She tries again. I think of the alphabet. What are all of my favorite things starting with A? Well, I don’t hate Algebra, but it’s not a favorite. I hope the woman doesn’t call me pumpkin. There was a time long ago when I was called pumpkin.

            "Count to 100 for me, pumpkin," the woman said, putting some nasty smelling yellow gunk on my arm.
            "1,2,3,4,5," I counted slowly. She took out a needle and pressed it into my arm. I counted faster.
            "1112131415161718."
            "You're going to have to start all over, pumpkin," she said, holding the needle in my arm.

            I'm used to random doctors coming in and out, greeting me, asking me questions. I've forgotten all of their names already. They usually want the same information, name, doctor, reason I'm there, allergies, almost like they want to know I'm conscious or something.
            "This is some feel good medicine," a doctor says. He isn’t as attractive as the last doctor that came in, but he looks more fun. The kind of guy I'd want to get woozy with. The feel good stuff takes an effect right away. Everything seems less stressful. I look at my hand where the IV goes in, the thing I'd been avoiding the entire time. It has a red thing that goes in my left hand, a blue cord that goes out, connected me to a white straw that is wrapped around my bed. I wave my arm at the cute doctor and my mom.
            "What does this do?" I ask, trying to determine the fundamentals of this contraption pumping something into my arm.

            I fade in and out of consciousness.

            “When are they going to take my tonsils?” I ask.

            “They’re already out,” an unfamiliar female voice says, or is it familiar, it’s hard to tell.

            “Are you going to take my tonsils out soon?” I feel like shouting. I want to be heard. It feels like if I let myself fall asleep, I may never wake up. I may never figure out if my tonsils are really gone yet. I a vaguely wonder if a doctor harvested themselves an organ that we hadn’t agreed upon while I was asleep.

            I eagerly bring a taco to my room to digest. I take in its meat and cheesy smell, and I unwrap its generic paper package. I rip off an edge of dough and meat to taste its tacoy goodness. Nothing, and a bit of a cotton taste. I try again. Same bland taste of cotton. I want to cry. I force myself to eat the rest. I remember the doctor saying, "Try to eat. It's important to have food in you. Especially meats. Protein will make you stronger."

            I am so jittery, I can't sleep long. I wake up again and look at my blue and white shoe on the floor. My dream was short and strange, all the other druggies laughed at me because I wanted to discuss the grammatical structure of Mandarin as soon as I got high. I’ve never been high before. I never realized how long my mouth was, there is so much room to hide in it, a long hallway with a lid. I remember a book